Tales from the Apothecary – One Hundred Candles and a Very Quiet Week

Well, this week has been a bit of a write-off.

After last week’s adventures involving Morris dancers, hobbits, hospitals and being put on bed rest, I had rather hoped this week might contain slightly less drama.

And, to be fair, it did. Mostly because I haven’t really gone anywhere.

However, somewhere amongst the resting, recovering and generally being rather useless, I did accidentally make 100 candles.

So apparently my definition of a quiet week may need some work.

One Hundred Candles

There are certain points in running a small business when you look around the Smithy and wonder quite how things reached this stage.

This week’s moment involved approximately 100 little copper tins, an extraordinary number of wicks, wooden sticks everywhere, and the kitchen table disappearing almost entirely beneath candles.

I got myself set up in the Smithy kitchen and made them in batches, with plenty of sitting down in between. Making 100 candles while technically supposed to be resting probably wasn’t entirely within the spirit of the instructions, but needs must.

These are a wholesale order and, once they’ve finished curing and are all labelled and ready, they’ll be winging their way down to Glastonbury.

And I have to admit, when the last batch was poured and all 100 were sitting there in their little copper ranks, it was rather satisfying.

The Smithy kitchen, meanwhile, looked as though it had been temporarily annexed by a very small candle factory.

A Little Room Mist Makeover

Something else has been quietly changing at the Smithy this week.

Our room mists have had rather a lovely makeover.

We’ve switched from our old aluminium bottles to beautiful amber glass, and we are ridiculously pleased with how they look. They feel wonderfully substantial and have given the whole range a bit of a glow-up.

Of course, changing the packaging sounds wonderfully simple until you remember that all of the existing stock has to be transferred into its new bottles.

So a very large thank you needs to go to Graham, who has spent a considerable amount of time pouring, peeling labels, sticking labels and generally helping an entire shelf full of room mists into their new clothes.

It was quite the operation.

But seeing the old and new bottles side by side, I think it was very much worth it.

Christmas Has Entered the Building

In other candle-related news, we’ve also started testing this year’s Christmas candles.

Yes, I know.

It’s August.

But this is one of the slightly peculiar things about having a shop. By the time everyone else starts thinking about Christmas, we’ve already been thinking about it for months.

This year we’re trying something a little different, including some absolutely gorgeous heavy glass tumblers. We’re really excited to have found a vessel that can be properly used afterwards, rather than simply being thrown away when the candle has finished.

The plan is to use an easily removable label and include instructions for cleaning the glass afterwards so it can have a second life as an actual tumbler.

Which does, of course, mean wick testing.

The glamorous world of candle making involves an awful lot more setting things on fire and staring at them critically than you might imagine.

The first test candle is now poured, so we shall see what happens.

Ask A Witch

We did also manage to have Ask A Witch at the Smithy on Friday evening.

I wasn’t there myself, but the others opened up and welcomed people into the shop for the evening. It was lovely to know that people were back in the Smithy, chatting, asking questions and generally bringing the Old Smithy back to life.

These little evening gatherings have become such a lovely part of what we do.

And some of you may have noticed that we’ve switched a few of our regular events around.

It’s only this month that Ask A Witch and Reading Room have had a bit of a do-si-do, so do keep an eye on the events posts for the correct dates and times.

Which brings us neatly to this week…

Reading Room is back this Thursday evening.

Bring whatever you’re currently reading, come and settle in at the Smithy and spend an evening reading in companionable peace.

There is no required book, no discussion questions and absolutely no expectation that you’ve read anything terribly worthy.

Fantasy, romance, crime, history, witchcraft, dragons, questionable supernatural boyfriends… all books are welcome.

Reading Room is essentially an excuse to put the phones down for a while, make ourselves comfortable and actually read.

And Finally… Rain!

After weeks of watching everything get progressively crispier, the grass around the Old Smithy has been looking considerably less green and rather more golden-brown.

Actual rain.

Which, frankly, I could probably do with myself.

Perhaps the most exciting development of the entire week is that it finally rained in Burley.

So we are hoping that a bit of proper rain might finally persuade it to remember that it is, in fact, grass.

The Smithy itself is looking as lovely as ever, but its surroundings have been giving rather strong late-August savannah.

Fingers crossed there might be a hint of green returning soon.

Hopefully, Back to Normal

I’m hoping that this week the shop will finally be back to its normal opening hours.

I am still taking things a little more carefully than usual, so there may need to be the occasional adjustment, but fingers crossed we’re heading back towards something resembling normality.

Thank you, as always, for bearing with the slightly unpredictable opening hours over the last couple of weeks.

Running a tiny shop alongside a body that occasionally stages an unscheduled rebellion is never particularly straightforward.

But the Old Smithy is still here. The candles are curing. The room mists have shiny new homes. Christmas has apparently started in August.

It has finally rained.

There are books to be read on Thursday. And somehow, despite having a week that felt like a complete write-off, there are 100 candles sitting at the Smithy waiting for their trip to Glastonbury.

Actually, perhaps we didn’t do quite as badly as I thought.